An Archive of What Changed— and What Didn’t: Twenty-Four Years of Khabar Lahariya

Twenty-four years ago, a group of women in Chitrakoot started a newspaper in a language the rest of the press had decided wasn't worth printing in. It cost Rs. 2.50. They delivered it themselves, on foot and by bicycle, to villages no other paper reached. How much has changed since then? When we look at the stories, not much. In 2002 we were reporting on dowry deaths, wage theft, water scarcity, abandoned wives, corruption, crumbling schools and communal violence. In 2026 we are still reporting on all of it.  This archive brings together some of our earliest editions and some of our most recent reporting. A woman in Manikpur whose in-laws beat her and then watched the police refuse to